The story
A local technology news site published a profile on 27 June 2013. It told how an Iraq-war veteran and amputee, Gary Walters, was held back by sweat build-up in his prosthesis even during chores such as mowing a lawn. The moisture made the limb slide and could cause friction blisters.
The problem as he described it
A blister could keep him out of the prosthesis for a day or two, and a sore could last a week or two. When he raised the matter with his prosthetist, the advice was to use deodorant on the limb, which highlighted that the problem was common and unsolved.
The project
As an engineering undergraduate at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he took the issue to his capstone design class. Fellow students Austin Darius, Jake Montez and David Schultz worked on it with him. Their result, the Aquilonix cooling system, was designed to keep an amputee’s limb dry during activity.
From class to company
The article reported that the team, named Leto Solutions, won the university’s $100,000 student venture competition, in which engineering and business students form a company around a product. The device became the central product of the new San Antonio start-up.
This is a summary of the archived text. See also the problem explained.